Matt Miller joins Bull & Fox to discuss future of Browns coaches, front office

Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller focused on the Cleveland Browns in this week’s installment of the Stick to Football podcast, in which he detailed his blueprint for fixing the franchise. He joined 92.3 The Fan’s Bull & Fox show on Thursday to outline some of those changes as well as to provide updates as to what fate may befall the current front office and coaching staffs after the 2017 season.

In the nearly one and a half seasons that Sashi Brown and company have been at the helm of the front office and Hue Jackson and his crew have handled coaching, the Browns have gone just 1-21. Unsurprisingly, a start like that has Miller believing the only recourse the Browns have is to “fire everybody,” after the season, citing that both Jackson and Brown are “both doing a terrible job.”

Though he concedes the problems “start with Jimmy Haslam,” the “communication and relationship between the front office and coaching staff is so bad that there’s no fixing that.” Miller added that he does not believe in Brown’s ability to evaluate talent and thinks Jackson “has already sealed his fate.” Though Miller concedes that “it might be” too early to completely trash the process that Brown has only just started, he also notes that Jackson is a likely scapegoat.

According to the well-connected Miller, “that’s definitely an opinion shared around the NFL, that [Jackson] is done,” with the prevailing belief being that Jackson will head back to the Cincinnati Bengals after his Cleveland tenure comes to an end. And in citing the numerous rumors that have been swirling as of late—such as Jackson’s desire to actually draft quarterback Deshaun Watson with the 12th-overall pick this year—Miller added, “when that already starts... I think you can safely say someone’s going to get fired.”

Miller’s critiques of the Browns’ process are numerous. He panned the 2016 Round 1 selection of wide receiver Corey Coleman as an “awful pick,” with the trade maneuvers used to ultimately snag him, “too cute.” He also criticized the Browns’ choice to stockpile excessive draft resources, saying “quantity over quality is not how you build a competitive football team,” adding “you don’t have six years, you don’t have five years... you rarely have three, so you have to get guys who can contribute at a high level and I don’t feel like they’ve done that.” Miller believes that offensive weapon Duke Johnson is not being used enough and that Jackson’s “offense is terrible.”

He did offer some solutions to Cleveland’s problems—and surprisingly, one was not to select a quarterback with a high first-round pick in the 2018 draft. Miller doesn’t believe that any of the top quarterback prospects expected to be available in the upcoming draft will fit with the Browns, even if Jackson is canned at season’s end. He’d rather the team make a move to sign a free agent—he names the Buffalo Bills’ Tyrod Taylor as one option—and add him to the group already in place.